“What else?” He smiles encouragingly as he brushes hair behind my ear.
“Kids. One, maybe two. Three.” I shake my head at the absurdity of it all. I lost one nonexistent kid to find out I want three.
“Anything else?”
It’s my turn to reach out and cup his jaw, lined with wrinkles and sprinkled with salt-and-pepper hairs to make up his beard and mustache. People might look at us and think we don’t match, but we do. We’re the same age in our hearts. The number on the paper is just that, a random number. It means nothing.
Over twenty years apart? It’s nothing. Not compared to what I feel for this man.
“A man to share it with. One to love fiercely and fight for every day and night.”
His eyes search mine. “Got someone in mind?”
I nod slowly.
“I love you, Karter. You might not want the kids, the house—” I huff out a laugh. “Or the pets, but I want you. Anyway I can have you, I want you.”
He clears his throat and grabs my hand, pulling it away from his face and kissing my knuckles before putting it back in my lap.
“What kind of man would I be if I let the womanIlove go without her dreams?”
A smile hangs in the balance of his next words. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you’re mine just as much as I’m yours. I’ve got a history of falling for women. I fall fast and hard. Did that with my first wife. Plan to do it with my next one.”
I can hardly breathe, let alone hope I understand his words.
He moves me till I’m facing him fully with one hand on my hip and the other around my neck so I can’t look away.
“Ruby was in here earlier. Said I fell for one woman in my lifetime. Funny thing is, I died. She figured that grants me another lifetime. Another love of my life. And it’s you, Babygirl. Has been since the moment I opened my eyes and saw you. You’re it for me. And if you’ll have me, I’m going to make you my old lady.”
He watches my face as I take it all in. His words. His heart, which he’s giving to me. All of it.
“Does that mean we can get a cat and a dog?” I sniff as the first thought in my mind slips out. I don’t know what else to do with everything he just said.
He laughs and crushes my lips to his. His tongue sweeps in, and I let him take control. As he usually does. I don’t resist his dominance. Not when it makes me feel more alive than anything ever has before.
I pull him tightly to me, planning on never letting him go again. Before, my mind was on Ashley. On protecting her while I could. Even if she wasn’t alive, I had the urge to protect her body, her spirit. But I was also protecting what I thought was Karter’s kid. Our kid. I feel okay knowing a part of him was with me. But I knew to protect myself more than the others because I would never want to hurt him in any way. And with me going, losing the kid because of me, that would cause him more pain than I ever want him to deal with.
But no more.
No more pain. No more worrying if he would want something like that. Again, or just with me. He knows my dreams, and he’s not running away. Not screaming for me not to call, not yelling at me to keep away from him. He has both arms wrapped firmly around me and is holding on just as tight as I’m holding him.
Neither of us wants this to end between us. He wants me to be his old lady. I might not know everything about club life, but I know that’s a thing. Aspecialthing. Something sacred, not given out to random girls. Not to someone who’s just a weekend thing or even a few-weeks thing. It’s not a ring, but in his world? In the world I’m willing to go into? It’s equivalent to it.
He eases me back down on the bed, covering half of me, his lips not leaving mine as we continue to express our love in the most natural way.
But when his hand slides down my neck and leaves a path in its wake that makes me tingle all over, I pull back.
“We need to stop.”
“Why?” He nips at my lips. My nose. My ears. Kissing and teasing as he circles my face in love and affection.
“Vicky will be back soon. She’ll want this room for the next patient.”
“Vicky needs to get laid,” he mumbles between licks around my throat, and I chuckle. He’s not wrong. Ashley and I used to joke about it constantly.
The thought of her death is still raw, but I know I can look back on her and smile. I’m heartbroken that she and her kids won’t grow up here. That I won’t meet them and learn to be a part of their life. But I have to think that she’s living life with them now. In heaven. In a place that Barry can’t get to.
